Page:The Old Countess (1927).pdf/175

 him,' Graham remarked, sitting down before his work and aware that though his eyes were on it he did not see it. His thought was not behind his eyes. It was fixed on Mademoiselle Ludérac, standing at the other end of the room before the table; and at the blurred edge of his field of vision a tall blackness was her form and a narrow slip of white her hand, hanging against her skirt—'Always her hands!' thought Graham.

'But Maupassant is not dreary,' the old lady was saying, and it was reassuring to know that she could not guess that he was really looking at Mademoiselle Ludérac. 'Horrible, often; and amusing, to the extreme, but never dreary; and never, never edifying. What I most dislike is the attempt, surreptitiously, as it were, to edify.—Still, if you dislike him?'

'Oh, I don't dislike him. Only, are we not over with him a long time since?'

'You said the other day that you would like to hear "Dominique" again,' Mademoiselle Ludérac spoke and turned her head to glance at Madame de Lamouderie.

'Monsieur Graham will say that we are over with him even a longer time since!' Madame de Lamouderie replied.

'I've never read "Dominique, said Graham. 'But it provides you, surely, with no salt or spice.'

'You must not take me au pied de la lettre, Monsieur,' rejoined the old lady with her stately bitterness. 'My spices and salts would seem very insipid to your young palate!'—and once again she laughed, very grimly.